in groups

“Waiting for your next breath” (Ita “NELL’ATTESA DEL TUO PROSSIMO RESPIRO”) is a double photographic book that includes four different photographic stories by Stefano Gentile and Monica Testa, whose shots have as object of investigation the landscapes of abandonment. Those that once were spaces for social relations (cinemas, parks, hospitals and so on), have now become temples of ruin: marginal, forbidden, dangerous, inaccessible. However, without indulging in the simple ‘painting of ruins’ so dear to Piranesi, they draw from the decadence of architectural complexes and materials the power to imagine possible futures of meaning. Here, in this lies the wait for your next breath… Enrico Coniglio and Stefano Guzzetti – separately – have created, in the margins of the photographic images, some possible musical settings, which we hope can accompany the slow browsing of the book by future owners.

The two 25×25 cm format books are housed in a cross-folded ‘container’ along with the two CDs.
The artwork was created by Chris Bigg (4AD, David Sylvian).
13 publishes this work in an edition of only 300 copies.

The duo Aqua Dorsa, perhaps better known under their respective names, Gianluigi Gasparetti and Enrico Coniglio, here present a very solemn yet foreboding album with dark undertones. Gigi originally composed the source material which was then expanded upon by Enrico. After letting the material sleep for a while we then rearranged and edited the tracks during the summer and fall of 2013.

The November Earth is a stark expression. At times very minimal and dark, yet underneath its foreboding surface beats a vibrant and pulsating elemental heart. Accompanying this landscape is also a short story written by Gianluigi in 2012, titled Sogno di Luce.

Aqua Dorsa is a project of two Italians, Enrico Coniglio and Gianluigi Gasparetti, and “The November Earth” is their second effort; the first one saw the light of day in 2009, thanks to Glacial Movements. As we all know, last year Gianluigi Gasparetti has left us for a better world, leaving a wonderful, rich legacy to all fans of ambient/ drone. “The November Earth” was created after the musician’s passing, but these are in fact his compositions. Enrico was responsible for further processing, post-production and the creation of the final form of the music that can be found on the silver disc. The Oöphoi spirit hovers over the entire album, from beginning to end, through the whole sixty-seven minutes. There are eleven – in most cases, not particularly long – compositions. Gigi’s music was always quite specific, not necessarily touching each ambient heart. Even among drone oriented individuals I know some who consider Oöphoi as an indigestible entity, too minimal and monotonous for them. Personally I always liked Oöphoi, although it’s obvious that with such a monstrous discography some releases I like more, some less. Some I still haven’t discovered…If you don’t know the project yet and would like to become familiar with it, I suggest starting your journey from “Hymns To A Silent Sky”, “Arpe Di Sabbia” and “The Rustling Of Leaves”. But I understand why one may not like Oöphoi works. His drones are often stretched to the limit, modulated and manipulated very subtly, sometimes imperceptibly, without using an insane number of tracks or special effects. Such an album is “The November Earth”. It isn’t an accident that the previous album, “Cloudlands” came out of Alessandro Tedeschi’s magic freezer, because although the title says November, the music is often as cold as a frozen stone. “Cold Tears” for example, the longest part of the disc, glitter like icicles on a sunny but terribly frozen day. Thanks to “Frost I” and above all “Frost II” I feel like I’m stuck in a crevasse in the middle of a snow desert. A “Pulse Of The Earth” makes that I don’t feel cold any longer, even though the blood in my veins has coagulated a long time ago. This recording is not as austere as the most ascetic of Oöphoi productions; the compositions are more varied and richer sounding, although any fireworks shouldn’t be expected. It still a very static form, causing the hands of a clock to rotate significantly slower than usual. “The November Earth” doesn’t disappoint. It’s also a kind of epitaph for a great musician that has left us far too early. In this context, the album is even more impressive. And touching.

“The November Earth” is Aqua Dorsa’s second full album, follow up to “Cloudlands ” (2009). Sadly, it will also be their last: Gianluigi Gasparetti (better known as Oöphoi), died in april 2013. The album they were working on was finished by his Aqua Dorsa partner Enrico Coniglio and was released later in 2013. Therefore,”The November Earth ” has become a fitting In Memoriam album to remember one of ambient music’s finest artist. The original compositions were created by Gianluigi “Gigi” Gasparetti at various moments: for most basic tracks it is not known when the original source material was created, but some of them have their origins as far back as the 90’s. The basic recordings were ‘expanded’, working together with Enrico Coniglio, adding extra details and instruments. But after Gasparetti passed away, this task became increasingly difficult, because Enrico wanted to be extra careful not to ‘betray’ the original sound. After letting the material sleep for a while the album was rearranged, and finally it was released later in 2013. It may be due to the sad story behind this album, but most of the (eleven) tracks seem to have a somewhat dark and foreboding undercurrent. The music is unhurried, meditative, with a mysterious sound that may have its roots in the 90’s but at the same time is very contemporary. The booklet inlay contains a short story by Gasparetti, titled “Sogno di Luce” (Dream of Light). Unfortunately, I am not able to read that since I neither speak nor read Italian. So I don’t know in what context it is written, but I understand the last words of this text are “Sparisce in un batter di ciglia” – which means “Disappears in the blink of an eye”. Disappeared, maybe. But not forgotten.

VITAL WEEKLY

Behind Aqua Dorsa we find Enrico Coniglio (guitar/synth, sampler, piano, percussions, vinyls) and Oophoi (synths, waterphone, glass chimes, percussions), which, if you have been reading Vital Weekly for some time, means we are dealing with the capital A of ambient and the major D for drone, and suspicious minds could think ‘ah, new age’ again, but that’s not really the case. Aqua Dorsa surely plays mood music, but it’s a bit too dark to be new age. There is an Italian text in the booklet, but I have no idea what that is about (I could plead for a translation on the website?), or in fact if it is related to the music. Here we have an album of some fine frosted music. It’s wintery, chilly and alien, but at the same time also dark and always atmospheric. Eleven pieces which you probably won’t notice as eleven, but one long trip into the arctic circles on a dark winter’s evening. Hardly any sunshine, cold as hell and the polar expedition moves slowly. This is something I stuck on for the whole afternoon, while doing other stuff, reading, working, walking around, phoning and such like, and when the album was done, just plays it again. It means perhaps I didn’t listen that closely, and one can assume that’s a pity, because isn’t music to be listened to, without any restriction? Yes, obviously that goes for most music, but with this kind of deep ambient music, it might be different. Here we may not expect something new. [FdW]

Listening to the dark ambient music on “The November Earth” is like entering an infinite world of shadows and deep caverns. Along the journey, lots of foreboding, organic and remote undercurrents fly by. If you’re looking for a kind of polished ambient, you won’t find it here as the drony sound design is rather abstract/psychedelic overall and even a bit cold occasionally. The aforementioned though is familiar territory for Italian composers Gianluigi Gasparetti (Oophoi) and Enrico Coniglio, forming the duo Aqua Dorsa. The whole 66-minute outcome sounds a bit too clinical and fragmented to my ears, with the exception of the soft glowing (but far too short) interlude “Yellow Spots” and the drifting textural spheres of “Pulse of the Earth” attached to it. [Bert Strolenberg]

In an interview to Blow Up magazine in 2010, Venetian sound artist Enrico Coniglio, commenting on his aesthetic approach to the soundscape (“it is the result of the aggregation of clusters of elements that have reason for existence in relation to their own specific function”), marked off the traces for a path that some time later would take him to collaborate with the photographer and field recordist Giovanni Lami, from Ravenna, in the Lemures project.

It is in the sonic exploration of the world of the “shadows of the landscape”, that we can find the humus of the sound research of the Italian duo, that with “Lemuria” presents a work based on an intensive recording session held in a semi-abandoned building in the countryside outskirts of Ravenna.

Starting from archival audio materials, specifically previously collected field recordings, Coniglio and Lami develop a series of improvisations in which the original sound is chiselled using digital processing, rather than focusing on the philological sense of the recording, which opens to further levels of interpretation and brings them to chiaroscuro landscapes and dense sound events structured on a mesmeric storytelling.

A phantasmic dimension of sound, in which unexpected appearances are materialized and revealed by field recordings that illuminate neglected places, abandoned spaces and hidden interstices.

The description, ultimately, of a “mental landscape”, as defined in the founding manifesto of the Lemures project, in which the complex interplay between subject and sound objects becomes a complex game of associations, reflections and reverberations, suspended between a denotative approach and a non-linear narrative.

If you think about the different focal elements of the acoustic research, for example the soundscape of the margin areas, the formal aspects of the landscape, the “topophonic” hybridizations, it is easy to see that this work represents a real turning point for Lemures. It reinforces the reasons for a specific method of treatment sound and simultaneously opens two new paths for the future, on the “crest of the border”. [Leandro Pisano, curator]

The first official EP – free download – on the prestigious Crónica electronica. Lemures melts, crushes, pushes, or throws away only field recordings, processed or not. More at lemuresfield.wordpress.com.

“Out and About” is a collaborative work, created as an attempt to bring together different talents and approaches, combining the experiences of musicians coming from different expertise areas.

Electronic in the concept more than in the sound, strongly characterized by the warm colors of the acoustic piano of Elisa Marzorati and the viola of Gabriele Mancuso, juxtaposed by the various interventions of melodica, harmonica and treated guitar of Enrico Coniglio; all of it supported by dilated and suspended ochestral arrangements of Emanuele Errante, which underlie the whole album with harmonies prone to a sometimes poignant melancholy.

An album that mixes different elements and moves, with ambiguity, between fiction and reality; characterized by calming atmospheres, but still shot through with dramatic elements that allude, in the intentions of the authors, to the wounds that man is causing to his wonderful planet.

Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi once claimed that a sound played for a long time “becomes so big that you start to hear many more harmonies, and it becomes bigger inside…[and] envelops you.” And there are times during Out and About when Emanuele Errante, Enrico Coniglio, Elisa Marzorati and accomplices seem to be exploring their more celebrated compatriot’s notion, albeit in a smaller scale setting. The trio known as Herion’s instruments float and flit around a single tonal centre in a semi-structured post-chamber music, an occidental raga, each track seeming to seep into the next creating a whole flow, accruing effect from its predecessor. Out and About may strike as slightly unfamiliar territory for long-established ambient and space music curators, Hypnos, but at heart there is congruence in this affiliation, and head Hypno-tist Mike Griffin has done well to refresh the imprint’s in-house stylesheet without compromising its musical mission. Neither ‘Ambient’ nor ‘Space’ at first sight, the recording’s refined blend of live instrumentation with subdued digital manipulations reveals itself a kindred spirit, as Herion’s melding of post-classical sonorities with an expansive remit issues in a kind of spatial chamber music with shifting cadences which might be designated ‘post-ambient’. Marzorati’s piano motifs, mixed with Coniglio’s melodica, harmonica, and treated guitar, all commingle sonorously in Errante’s settings, seen to good effect on the keynote “One Minute After the Sunset.” The classical influence is never felt in any turgid or grandiose gestures, the music’s movements graceful and lilting, shifting subtly between blithe and melancholy. “Risvegli” finds glistening strings and piano peregrinations in incantatory communion. In “Two Minutes to Sunrise” tension comes from an ebb-flow motion that builds coalescing as if to climax but remaining teetering teasingly on the edge of resolution. Evident in all this is Errante’s sleight of hand in choreographing these delicately interwoven soundscapes, his facility in harnessing production methodologies to synthesize acoustic and electronic to optimal effect; it’s as if it’s his pleasure to leave instruments free to frolic self-consciously before gently dissolving them, or washing them lightly in a mercury of digitalia. While piano, viola and guitar all play cameo roles on Out and About, it’s the spirit of the ensemble, and the skilled design of its assembling that are the stars of Herion’s quiet drama. [Alan Lockett]

HYPNAGOGUE REVIEWS

What we have in Herion’s Out and About is a work that is ambient chamber music in every sense of the term: spatial, intimate, classically based. Strip away the subtle wash of electronics that Emanuele Errante and Enrico Coniglio whisper beneath piano from Elisa Marzorati and viola by Piergabriela Mancuso, and what’s left is a rich bed of beautiful compositions for traditional acoustic instruments. (Besides their laptop work, Errante and Coniglio also add strings, guitars and more.) One of the best compliments I can pay Herion is to say that I’d listen just to those elements, sans electronics, and still firmly enjoy the disc. With the opening track, “Oxg,” Herion establish their acoustic-drone base, the metallic rasp of the strings adding not just a texture to the sound, but an equal sense of emotional warmth and humanity. It’s part of the real beauty of Out and About-the way in which we’re intermittently reminded, as the disc goes along, that the sounds aren’t all circuit-born. It’s a good reminder, since it’s easy to lose sight of that as Herion quietly wrap you in smooth sound-ribbons. There’s a lot to like here, and much of begins with Marzaorati’s piano work. Her playing is sweet, graceful and impeccable, whether it’s thoughtfully wandering through Errante and Coniglio’s misty landscapes (“One Minute Before the Sunrise”), holding a polite dialogue with a sighing harmonica (“Cab”), dropping like forgotten tears (“Lindos”), or giving itself over to electronic treatment to capture a sound-image (“The Hanging Glacier”). The disc closes with her playing alone on the appropriately titled “Solo,” and it’s a standout moment on an excellent disc. And while her playing is central to Out and About, it’s the atmospheres that Errante and Coniglio craft around her and Mancuso that give the whole thing an amazing depth and a touch of the ethereal. The worlds are perfectly blended on the dramatic “Moske Orgulje,” with all elements adding their voices in balance. From start to finish, Out and About moves from moments of soulful serenity to breathtaking beauty. Its organic roots run deep to ground the listener in the moment and the experience. Out and About is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

AMAZON (customer's review)

For me, this is like “dreams came true” project, because it features Enrico Coniglio and Emanuele Errante who are resoponsible for some remarkable ambient solo albums released during the last few years, with some guest appearances of Elisa Marzorati, highly respected pianist. Now these three extremely talented musicians are teamed up in Herion project and landing on Hypnos. You can’t go wrong with that, but I think this collaboration was as much exciting and challenging also for Hypnos as it marks new direction for this label thanks to Herion’s ambient strongly influenced by classical music with the use of many acoustic instruments. Even if quite new territory to Hypnos, it fits more than perfectly to them. Thanks to virtuosity of all three members plus highly notable performance on viola by Piergabriele Mancuso, “Out And About” is absolutely beautiful, evocative, intimate and warm collection of compositions masterfully bridging filigree acoustics with gentle amount of electronics and field recordings. Perfectly crafted in every detail and even if quite minimalistic at times, always very expressive and effective in keeping the attention of each listener during the each of 46 minutes. The opening “Oxg” immediately elevates the album into untouchable heights and will never step down during the next 9 compositions. Absolutely splending mix of piano, viola, harmonica, melodica, rainstick with some synthesized sounds. Angelic beauty is not measurable, but it’s certainly called “Oxg”. Just the same could be said on melancholic “Lindos”. Dreamy “Cab”, “One Minute After The Sunset” and “The Earth” recall all your hidden memories while “Moske Orgulje” and “The Hanging Glacier” get more darker and tense. Cheerful “Two Minutes To Sunrise” and moody “Risvegli” and “Solo” close the album with all their tranquillity. I already used a lot of superlatives, but I still don’t get enough when listening to this sonic pleasure, Herion can be easily described after Suspended Memories as another “Ambient Supergroup” and Emanuele Errante, Enrico Coniglio and Elisa Marzorati are the rising stars of ambient genre and bringing some new fresh wind to it. A pure masterwork!!! [Richard Gürtler]

TEXTURA

Though the Italian trio Herion boasts Emanuele Errante, Enrico Coniglio, and Elisa Marzorati as its members, the outfit is clearly more than the mere sum of its parts, especially when their multi-instrumental contributions to Out and About are complemented by the luscious viola playing of Piergabriele Mancuso. The trio members themselves function as a veritable mini-orchestra, with Marzorati’s piano playing augmented by the guitars, strings, harmonica, synthesizers, melodica, field recordings, and laptop processing of her colleagues. What results is a richly detailed and rewarding collection that’s often affectingly plangent in tone, not to mention stirring. Herion’s electronically enhanced chamber music is artful without being precious and soulful to boot, and a quiet emotional sensitivity colours the album’s forty-six minutes in a way that helps distinguish the recording from the competition. Marzorati plays in an impressionistic and restrained manner that’s in keeping with the meditative character of the album’s ten pieces, while the wistful quality of the melodica often creates a mood of longing. Errante and Coniglio typically fashion silken webs of multi-faceted design against which the contrasting voices of Marzorati and Mancuso resound. That’s never more apparent than during “Two Minutes To Sunrise” when the piano flickers and viola shudders amidst a gleaming backdrop of fluttering detail. Elsewhere, an ambient setting, “Oxg,” inaugurates the album splendidly, with the serenading wheeze of the melodica and harmonica punctuated by piano chords, synthetics, and the drone of the viola. Pairing its melancholy cry with Marzorati’s gentle sprinkle and a rich backdrop of textures imbues “Lindos” with a pastoral beauty that elevates the album. A slightly darker tone pervades “Moske Orgulje” when an underlying metronomic rhythm, punctuated by the viola’s interjections, urgently nudges the material forward. One final contrast surfaces when Marzorati’s given the spotlight during the peaceful, album-closing “Solo.” While there is a subtle ambient dimension to Out and About that’s in keeping with Hypnos releases in general, Herion’s music aligns itself more closely to a style one might call ‘chamber electronic-classical.’ Regardless of labels, the album is a distinguished collection of enchanting mood settings that again speaks highly for the strong reputation Hypnos has acquired throughout its history.

SONIC IMMERSION

“Out and About” is the debut release of the Italian trio Herion, and at the same time also marks the first release in digipak format on the Hypnos label. The members of the ambient-glitch project Herion are Emanuele Errante (composer of the peculiar album “Humus” on Evan Bartholomew’s Somnia label), Enrico Coniglio (Aqua Dorsa project collaborator with Oophoi for the album “Cloudlands”, he also released “Sea Cathedrals” solo on Silentes), and Elisa Marzorati. Next to synthesized sounds and patches, the musicians also implement field recordings, guitars, harmonica, melodica, bells, gong, rainstick and piano on “Out and About”. These versatile elements make the sonic outcome venture in more acoustic territory while remaining comfortable, highly moody and atmospheric. It’s an introspective and rather melancholic affair though, as the instrumental music slowly progresses in a classical, minimal but also blissful manner. The sensitive undercurrents within the ambient compositions make it even more intimate, evocative and reflective. This is music for the silent hours deserving close listening. The beautiful art of ambient music already has many expressions, “Out and About” adds another dimension to it. [Bert Strolenberg]

PAUL VNUK's quote

I wanted to make sure I gave this album a number of spins before commenting, plus its always a strange balancing act to review a CD on label, when you yourself are on the label as well, but anyway…in simple terms, I freaking love this cd. It is one of the few new ambient albums in the past 3 or 4 years to truly grab my attention and excite me. When I hear discs like this I start feeling like ambient/space/electronic music is actually vital again. OK so why? Well for me this disc combines 3 key elements that I find essential for me as both a musician and a music fan. 1. The music acknowledges tradition In other words, this CD moves back to and hints at the paradigms set up by early EM pioneers like Eno. It also hints at older minimalist classical works like the old school electronic music practice of not creating electronic music with synthesizers, but instead using electronics and effects to make acoustic instruments sound electronic. It moves nicely beyond the stereotypical drone and reverb drenched “same old same old” that has been dominating our genre for the better part of the decade. All of this to say that this CD has a healthy dose of retro coolness to it without being copy catish, and that is what makes it sound fresh and modern. 2. Its real Again, I love the fact that these are real acoustic instruments for the most part. This also means that microphones and “air” where involved. This was a recording project, not simply an in the box capture and render project. For me this adds a vibe and space to this album that would not be possible with soft synths, loops and or samples. Not that those types of records cant be done well, it just allows this one to be set apart into a different sonic landscape. Also, these are real players/musicians and as such this album has a language to it that would have been harder to achieve with programing, again another one of its unique points for me. 3. Tradition be damned Similar to part 1, but this is just a good cd of (capital M) Music that happens to be ambient and spacious with twinges of processing and treatments, rather than being an ambient or space music album. Ok, so is it perfect? I am not saying this is the greatest album of all time or anything like that, but man is this a breath of fresh air and nice new avenue for Hypnos and our genre in general. I know nothing about the musicians on this recording, but Nice Job guys!!! [Paul Vnuk]

VITAL WEEKLY

Probably there aren’t many groups on Hypnos: this ambient label usually releases albums by artists who work alone on their electronic, ambient music, but Herion is a group, a trio from Italy, with as its members Emanuele Errante, Enrico Coniglio and Elisa Marzorati (the latter of whom I never heard). Two firm names from the strong Italian ambient scene. The instruments at their disposal includes not just things with keys and knobs, but also field recordings, guitars, harmonica, bells, gong, rainstick, piano plus a guest role on some of the pieces by Piergabriele Mancuso on viola (or perhaps all tracks?). This gives the album a great quality, breaking away from the traditional ambient music, and expanding into the world of classical music with all these acoustic instruments. Especially the violin plays a strong role in defining that classical sound. The music here is pretty strong. Definitely moody and atmospheric, but also quite warm and acoustic. I was reminded of the CD by Modern Institute on Expanding Records (see Vital Weekly 518), which was also, curiously enough, Italian. A highly refined work.

Aquadorsa is a new musical Italian ambient project formed by Enrico Coniglio and Oophoi. Their first work “Cloudlands” is a perfect mix of glitch, classical and orchestral glacial ambient soundscape.

REVIEWS

First Review

This is a new name, well at least to me it is. Behind Aqua Dorsa we find Italy’s well-known master of all thing very ambient Oophoi and a new name, Enrico Coniglio. The latter gets credit for guitars, synthesizers, programming and sampling, while Oophoi takes control of synthesizers, piano, percussion, waterphone, chimes, singing bowls, theremin, programming and sampling. Seeing this being released by Glacial Movements, a label who announce themselves as ‘ambient’ and ‘isolationist’, and taken Oophoi’s previous output in account, you know which direction this. This is ambient music but then with a little bit more, and no doubt Coniglio is the man responsible for that extra bite. Not simply satisfied with ‘just’ ambient synthesizer textures, there is an addition from the world of microsound to this. Underneath the warm tapestries are woven of synthesizers playing sustained textured sounds, but the icing (pun intended) on the cake comes from the crackles, buzz and hiss that are on top
of this. That makes that this music moves out of the usual ambient field, and blends together ambient and microsound, while, because its not entirely generated in the digital realm, its not entirely ambient glitch either. A marriage that works wonderfully well, I’d say. Deep atmospheric textures, icy glitches on top. Maybe the album as a whole is a bit long. One long track could have easily been skipped to make the album even a bit stronger, where it now is a bit too much of the same here and there. But its a fine altogether. (FdW)

Vital Weekly 683

Second Review

I feel like I’m in trapped some sort of ambient corner here sometimes. I appear to have become the office ambient beard without even realising! Well here’s a CD of ‘ambience’ by Aqua Dorsa who are a couple of chilled out Italian dudes from all account. You know my brother in law was calling both his wife and child dude the other day. It must have been very confusing for them…. Anyway one of these Italians is Oophoi who is a reasonably well known ambient lord and if you’ve not heard his work then you should check it out. A couple of minutes into this and there’s some beats and all sorts of stuff going on. In fact it reminds me a lot of when I first heard ambient music back in the late 80’s when it was essentially just slowed down and more chilled out techno. There used to be a lot more going on in ambient music than you get these days. Cloudlands is one of those ‘interesting’ ambient albums and it harks back to those times where more shit was happening on the stereo and it’s not just a long drawn out piece of music based around a whale farting. Well worth a punt!

Norman Records

Third Review

Cloudlands is the collaborative result of two Italian musicians of the ambient scene – Gianluigi Gasparetti, known as Oophoi and Enrico Coniglio. Unlike the dark and isolationist tendency of most editions from this fine Roman label, this CD shows an ethereal and atmospheric sound that you can guess by its title. The seven tracks of Cloudlands are based on warm drones, often accompanied by metallic bowls and chimes that seem touched by the breeze, with glitches and clicks a bit all over the place, but with great economy of means and a never saturated sound. “Zero Gravity” induces an unhealthy lethargy, evolving in a way that leaves behind the sound elements until there is no more than remaining silence. But it is emblematic of Cloudlands album by its construction at different sound layers, the transparency and depth they have, preserving a complete sharpness. On the other way, “Syhan” is a track that unfolds in four significantly different parts, according the loops and samples which they include. As for “Alone In The Rising Fog”, the album’s longest track, it is also the most crepuscular, with a mechanical tone and the occasional passage of human figures that suggest the future that never happened – not that future glimpsed through the transcontinental zeppelins of the Thirties, but the a far more daunting future given by the character of Robur, a Jules Verne creation at the end of nineteenth century. Cloudlands is, in short, an album of electronic music that sounds organic, virtually without beats, where the sound of the guitar, the piano, the bowed instruments, and the distant voices, transport the listener to a place without time, into a diffuse dream, where the open spaces of ambient are composed (or decomposed) into particles of microsound. A unique and successful approach, which is the great achievement of this AquaDorsa’s CD. (distorsom)

AquaDorsa is a new duo collaboration between Italians Enrico Coniglio and Oophi (Gianluigi Gasparetti) and there first release Cloudlands fits in perfectly with Glacial Movements auteristic stamp, offering the listener a methodical but subtly emotional journey into crystalline, isolationist ambience that is wondrously, and at times, very intelligently evocative of all things Antarctic.

Across 7 immersive tracks, the duo rework their fundamental instrumentation (which includes piano, guitar, synth pads and minimal glitch textures) into an unrecognisable mass, synthesising these binary elements into a concentrated and delicately unfolding sound which, at times, perfectly mirrors the mise-en-scene of the glacial environment. Each cut of Cloudlands, it seems, is meticulously crafted to ensure this.

The dub-like saturated tones of ‘A Pillow of Clouds’ open the album, and as each note melds into another above seditary glitch textures and sine waves, the processed sound of what sounds like a clarinet is gently revealed like ice being melted by shafts of glorious sunlight before it dominates the song and locks into a minimal grove, echoing ‘Grinning Cat’ era Susumu Yokota. ‘Daylight Fading into Evening Silence’ is as aptly titled as its predecessor and lulls the listener with rising warm synth swells and digital hisses which rise and fall like fogged breath, eventually coinciding with snaps of dry glitch beats. With ‘The Pond Reflected Her Smile’, AquaDorsa begin to explore their sound in more depth (each consecutive track passes the ten-minute mark), centred around a simple string melody that is slowly explored, pulled and processed to reveal an evolving variety of tones inherent in the sample, under pinned by subtle granular electronics that sound like snow trampled underfoot.

The following piece in, comparison, is purely textural and are more in line with the Glacial Movements signature ‘dark ambient’ sound. ‘Zero Gravity’ barely includes any melody at all, safe for a ghostly loop at the start of the composition which quickly dissipates, replaced by ominous throbs of deep synth, detuned percussion and icicle like sines. These experimentations spill over into ‘Syhan’, which begins with a gloom drenched organ, recreated to sound like a ghostly moan, before the duo begin to reintroduce the warmth found on the opening three pieces with a similar combination of blissful melodies and concentrated digital manipulation, a sound clearly influenced by the ‘pop-meets-glitch’ template of Taylor Deupree’s 12k records. The albums closer, ‘Night of Trembling Stars’, offers much of the same, although contains the first definable use of Coniglio’s guitar, bending and counting colourful miasmas of effect drenched piano.

By far the most interesting cut on Cloudlands is the 18 min epic ‘Alone in the Rising Fog’. Like ‘Zero Gravity’, the duo return to strictly contouring sound in a meticulously evolving piece that calls to mind both Thomas Koner and Steve Roach. Dealing exclusively in submarinal atmospherics, deep swathes of granular synthesisers and distilled electronic pulses, save for a few injections of distant melancholic melodies, this track is an exercise in methodical sound sculpture. The tidal waves of atmospheres exactingly illuminate the rich sonic pallete of the duo, with each element of the composition explored thoroughly and treated with a cold detachment, as expected of an album that aims to capture the essence of the unforgiving Antarctic plains.

At times, Cloudlands can border on the predictable; specifically in their employment of melody which is nostalgic of a host other ambient releases, but its their inventiveness and effectiveness when with dealing their chosen concept, that elevates the album above a slew of like-minded releases. Cloudlands definitely benefits from an attentive listen for its magisterial riches to be fully absorbed, particularly true of the longest piece in which repeated listens is fully advised. That said, the opening two tracks, in there manageable lengths, prepare the listener for the 10 min plus excursions that follow, only helped by the accessibility of their lush harmonies and should therefore appeal to those with less experience in similar music. Listen through a good pair of headphones or in bed during the deep of night, both will suite AquaDoras’s effort beautifully. A fine edition to an already celebrated label. (David McLean)

Brilliantly perfect, is what arrives to my hands recently through Glacial Movements…An in deep vibrational ambient soundscapes developed through AQUADORSA.an Italian project consisting of two creative spirits in the shapes of Enrico Coniglio,a guitar player and composer which through time has been recognized due the nature of its art through post-urban and post-industrial territory. Its development here is just amazing, through the well performed use of guitars, synthesizers, programing, sampling and more yet to be discover. at the other side we have the shape of GianLuigi Gasparetti, known as Oophoi who has been involved in alot of projects, releases in the fields of deep ambient soundscapes, emerging into his own world searching new lights through this collaborative project AQUADORSA.he appears in all his own splendor though diverse use of elements such as piano, percussions, waterphone, chimes, singing bowls, theremin, programing and sampling in most of the tracks. Really an interesting fusion developed here. The album includes a total of 7 compositions in which the majestic, in deep structures seems to catch you to such desolated icy textures through tracks as “A pillow Of Clouds” or “Daylight Fading Into Evening silence” which are the first two tracks. Then comes, “The Pond Reflected Her Smile” an in deep voyage to the center of nothing, though vast cold eerie structures and clitches aborting from time to time, dressed with such vast atmospheres filled with such monumental desolated elements. “Zero Gravity” is structured through such ethereal soundcapes,chimes and other devices which start to mutates within the whole minutes creating hybrid spaces crawling from each one of the almost 11 minutes of this composition. Another track is “Syhan” still keeping such sensitive, expressionism handled through ambient soundscapes with some voices as background of the track. This track is so calm and fragile but with the necessary power to be fell by yourself when deeply listening each one of the different facets reflected here. “Alone In The Rising Fog” is longer track with almost 19 minutes of deep explorations of sounds and structures collapsing themselves to create ghastly atmospheres with such cold soundscapes floating through the whole composition. Finally the album is closed with “Night Of Trembling Stars” another in deep composition in which both artists develops all its creativity and imaginative reflections into calm, dimensional soundscapes able to transport you to such regions still to be discovered by human eye. the album comes in a beautiful digipack and for more info just visit the Glacial Movement page in order to get more about this ethereal and atmospheric ambient Italian act AQUADORSA.

PAN.O.RA.MA Audio/Visual/Web Journal

Eleventh Review

The sixty-seven minute Cloudlands documents the first collaboration between AquaDorsa partners Enrico Coniglio and Oophoi (Gianluigi Gasparetti), the former known for the Psychonavigation releases AREAVIRUS – topofonie vol.1 and dyanMU, and the latter admired for analog-based ambient work issued on Hypnos and Glacial Movements, among others. In keeping with the experimental spirit of those Coniglio releases, Cloudlands opts for atmospheres that are not only tranquil but turbulent. To create the seven orchestral-ambient soundscapes, the two draw upon a broad palette of sounds with guitars, synthesizers, piano, percussion, waterphone, chimes, singing bowls, Theremin, and samples the source materials used.
Some of the material adheres pretty closely to the ambient-electronic template. In “Daylight Fading into Evening Silence,” for example, lush synth pads and micro-percussive accents combine to create pretty much what one expects from the ambient-electronic genre: sonic atmosphere so tranquil it verges on somnolent. The turbulent and unsettling set-piece “Alone in the Rising Fog” serves up eighteen minutes of creeping noises and ghostly whooshes that evoke the anxious experience of someone lost in the fog and desperately struggling to catch his/her bearings. In other settings, though, the duo offset the genre’s customary tranquility by scattering percussive pebbles across the tracks’ smooth surfaces: static pops and piano plinks pepper the synthetic tones that stretch out languorously across “The Pond Reflected Her Smile,” and rhythm textures of vinyl static and subtle sounds of singing bowls counter the tinkling chimes and ethereal tones that dominate “Zero Gravity.” In “A Pillow of Clouds,” the lonely call of an oboe-like instrument is heard amidst swathes of vaporous synthesis, and an insistent beat pattern surfaces near track’s end, lending the material a heft not typically heard in an ambient project. In the album’s boldest departure, “Syhan” distances itself from the strict ambient template by adding a skeletal, slow-motion beat pattern and garbled voice sample to its pretty piano theme (the part sampled from Penguin Café Orchestra’s “Red Shorts”) and crystalline atmospheres. A discernible escalation in intensity and episodic shift transpires too during the piece’s twelve-minute running time, a narrative move that further separates it from the even-tempered stasis of the prototypical ambient setting. Cloudlands ultimately registers as a varied collection that in subtle and satisfying ways shakes up the ambient soundscaping template without betraying its fundamental character. – Written by Ron Schepper,August 2009

TEXTURA

Twelve Review

ROCKAROLLA issue 21

Thirteen Review

From the Italian underground comes this exceptional ambient collaboration between Enrico Coniglio and Gianluigi Gasparetti (aka Oophoi). Inspired by German electronic music of the 1970s Gasparetti entered the deep ambient field in 1995 with impressive recordings made with analogue synths like the Cluster classics, in a stone building in the country. For his part, guitar player and composer Coniglio has collaborated with many artists, including Nicola Alesini, Elisa Marzorati, and Cluster’s maestro Joachim Roedelius. Together as Aquadorsa the duo dance around the divide of stillness and glitch, like a contemporary remix of Eno’s Apollo soundtrack prepared in the free floating environment of zero gravity. Over the kind of slow, spacious synth themes heard on Oophoi’s releases, Coniglio disturbs the peace with vinyl clicks, sonar bleeps and high whistling oscillations. Still an overall calm pervades, despite the distractions from the landscape of the industrial age. Visit the ‘oophoidrones’ page at myspace for a five-track preview of this wonderful change of pace.

AquaDorsa is the result from the collaborative efforts of Enrico Coniglio and Gianluigi Gasparetti aka Oophoi. We know Enrico Coniglio from different solo albums while Gianluigi Gasperatti gained some recognition as member of Nebula before setting up Oophoi. “Cloudlands” is a pure soundscape release where this project invites the listener to a journey through imaginary sound universes. The opening track “A Pillow Of Clouds” sounds as a perfect warm-up preparing the listener to an ambient journey. The next tracks are full of prosperity and are like taking you miles away from the daily stress and other problems from the daily life. I’ve been rather surprised discovering such a wafting release on Glacial Movements that often offered darker releases to their listeners. “The Pond Reflected Her Smile” sounds so sweet and evasive with its wafting synth parts. I was referring to darker releases on this label and from the next track on (cf. “Zero Gravity”) AquaDorsa progressively moves its experiment into darker regions. “Zero Gravity” is rather mysterious than dark, but seems to announce icy parts. It’s definitely one of the best cuts from this album. The next 3 songs are only accentuating the darker side of the project, which finally leads to a kind of climax on the “Night Of Trembling Stars”. This track is definitely the most animated piece of the album and especially the strings are emerging from the glacial structures. When paying some attention for the writing part of this album you’ll be possibly surprised by the impressive effect and other studio treatments. I can imagine original sounds that have been reworked to finally get this particular kind of icy and mystic expression. “Cloudlands” will definitely be please by the dark ambient lovers in search of some refreshing experiences! (DP:7)DP.

Italy’s Glacial Movements label has, little by little, minimal increment by minimal increment, established itself as one of the world’s most vital headquarters for both rural and worldwide-etched ambient and related musics. Though only a few releases in, already we’ve seen the likes of Rapoon and Lull (two soundscaping giants, certainly) make their presence known across the label’s remit; future works are promised by no less a global isolationist than Thomas Koner, as well as the mutable Francisco Lopez and Marsen Jules. Aquadorsa pairs two of Italy’s finest sound artisans together in one of the more intriguing collaborations of late: the erstwhile Oophoi, whose own vast library of drones and broadstroke works has assumed mammoth proportions in both size and outreach, and relative newcomer Enrico Coniglio, whose 2007 release Areavirus on the Irish Psychonavigation label was one of that year’s most criminally neglected outings. At first this doesn’t appear to be the most simpatico of partnerships: though both artists are adept programmers of the requisite synths and samplers on hand, Coniglio’s “classical” approach to sonic mythmaking feels at odds with expert abstractionist Oophoi. Naturally, initial appearances are deceiving, no less so in this case. Cloudlands reveals itself to be a veritable anomaly in this age of the mono(tone)drone and so much over-arching minimalism; layered and detailed to an impeccable degree, the seven lengthy pieces are practically regal in their pragmatic impressionism. Rather than ply more easily contrived and trivial “dark” ambient pursuits, or simply probe typically spatial, post-Tangerine Dream confines, the duo create a teeming hive of (micro)activity that plays like a millennia-burnished ecosystem of sound. Misty mountain samples, sharp clangs of (processed) guitar, metallic-buffed textures, and a number of surprisingly off-putting touches neatly sidestep the usual ambient clichés; sure, barometric pressures rise and fall, atmospheres are breached and respirate effectively, but everything seems intentionally placed here, with nary a duff note or redundant gesture. Powerful stuff, rife with ingenuity and constantly interesting—more please, fellas.

(November 2009) Italy’s Glacial Movements label may be a relative newcomer to the ambient netherworld, but a slow but steady infusion of releases from the likes of Rapoon and Lull, and the promise of more in the offing from experimental ambient veterans such as Thomas Köner and Francisco Lopez, have given GM a strong foothold in darkly drifting musical terrain. And with Cloudlands GM capo Alessandro Tedeschi has allied himself again with a heavyweight, namely Italian mystic-ambient-space-drone maven, Oophoi. It’s that Prince of Audio-Tides whose communings with little known experimentalist, Enrico Coniglio, are here gathered under the name Aquadorsa. Of Oophoi enough should be known already, but it’s Coniglio’s contribution – his bringing of digital turbulence to Gasparetti’s more naturalistic sea of tranquility – that allows Cloudlands to stand that bit apart from the ambient space crowd, whether sprinkling pebbly gravel over crystalline contours or peppering pops and prepared piano patter over languorous lulls.

So, what might this portend, beyond a passing interest in post-digital music technology? Coniglio’s ‘research’ is said to be “increasingly focused on the relationship between ‘music’ and ‘landscape,’ seeking to represent the contemporary crisis of the territory, the loss of nature and identity of places, and the unknown on the evolution of post-urban and post-industrial territory.” So that’s your interpretive paradigm for you. No simple glum gloom-fest nor vacuous lightside languish, but a Zeitgeist-pondering meditation, with a plentiful palette of guitars, synthesizers, piano, percussion, waterphone, chimes, singing bowls, Theremin, and samples pressed into service. “A Pillow of Clouds” sets the tone, deploying a pinch of post-dub digital to etiolate its synth washes, while a processed reed-sound is delicately exposed amid swathes of vaporous synthesis, before an insistent pulse drives the whole towards the end. Similarly paradigm-mixing, “Daylight Fading into Evening Silence” hosts a wave-like cycling synth loop washing over and over, digital crepitations creeping in, heralding Raster Noton-lite glitch-rhythmics. Nocturnal singing-bowl hum consorts with chimes and wisps over “Zero Gravity,” as a ghostly loop cedes to looming syn-throb, detuned percussion and steely sine-shafts. “Syhan” goes further, with its skeletal slow-mo beats and veiled vocal fragment conspiring to lead winsome piano thematics and crystalline atmospherics far from the path of ambient purism. Aquadorsa’s is a combo of bliss and bitcrush, it occurs, not far removed from 12k’s pop-microsound, though on the unquiet “Alone in the Rising Fog” the duo serves up a slew of slithery and spooked atmospherics suggestive of fog-bound disorientation – cloud lands nearer to Köner country and Roach worlds.

All in all, eschewing standard dark isolationist void-starings and smile-on-the-cosmos New Age fluff alike, Aquadorsa’s is at once a more expansive aerial view (cf. Oophoi’s release on GM’s Wurm series, An Aerial View), while cosying up to the glitch-click aesthetic. Cloudlands reveals itself to be far from the bleak and parsimonious monodrone of much enmired in the midden of the minimal, or draped in cartoon Dark; rather it is a subtly teeming affair of strata and substrata, of stately airs and grace attractively mottled by a mezzotint of microsound.

By Alan Lockett – IGLOO MAGAZINE

Twenty one Review

What makes ambient isolationist? In the early 1990s it was a reaction against the highly rhythmical, ornate, more-techno-than-ambient music that, oxymoronically, was often used for dancing. Stripped to the most minimal, artists like Thomas Köner created very quiet, slow moving music that seemed like the sound of absence. Polar regions seemed an apt metaphor, a featureless, flat, wind-swept landscape. And unlike the deserts, bleak landscapes that have inspired other musicians, polar regions are uninhabited, removing the vestiges of aboriginal civilizations that haunt Steve Roach and his desert ambient colleagues. In 1994, Virgin Records released a 2-CD compilation entitled Isolationism that tremendously expanded the acceptable range of music covered by the term. In particular, it opened the door to paranoia and despair, looking at isolation as a social term, and moving toward other environments, inner as well as outer, where an individual could be isolated. But one label which has retained the far, cold north as inspiration, ironically from Mediterranean Italy, is Glacial Movements, self described as “glacial and isolationist ambient.” Their first album was a compilation, Cryosphere, released in July 2006, and their schedule has proceeded as slowly as the ice portrayed on their covers and alluded to in the label’s very name. The label’s sixth album, Cloudlands, hit the streets this spring under the name Aquadorsa (or perhaps Aqua Dorsa, both spellings are on the web site). It’s also unclear whether this is an ongoing project, but in any event the album pairs relative newcomer Enrico Coniglio with one of the most venerable names in deep ambient, Oöphoi. Unlike some of Oöphoi’s other collaborations where both artists share an expertise in slow moving drones, Coniglio adds an unexpected layer of noise, borrowing liberally from 12k glitch and Raster-Noton crunchy rhythms. Pieces like The Pond Reflected Her Smile are still characterized by Oöphoi’s languid harmonies, where Coniglio’s slow click percussion adds an unusual grit. The scratches on Zero Gravity would sound completely at home on well-played vinyl, blending with the subaquatic melodic loops and continuous bell resonances. The music could be considered a departure from the glacial and isolationist rubric, considerably more active and melodic than Lull’s subliminal soundscapes, perhaps the label’s venture into the more social aspects of isolation. For an oblique perspective, Coniglio’s solo work Glacial Lagoon, available on the Laverna netlabel, is a deliberate investigation of the loss of identity in the post-urban landscape colored by his residence in Venice. Where Glacial Lagoon is considerably more glitchy than Cloudlands, the collaboration with Oöphoi brings to the music a wistfulness, an emotional longing previously absent from the genre.
Glacial Movements releases are available digitally from all of the usual suspects, but the CDs are packaged in beautiful digipaks with artwork by the Norwegian photographer Bjarne Riesto that is considerably more than the single image CD cover that comes with downloads. Only half of Riesto’s photo is visible on the Aqua Dorsa image above, as the rest is spread across the entire gatefold. Lull’s cover is especially effective, an image of white ice that is displayed in context of gorgeous, lush, full color arctic sunset on the inside.

CLASSICAL DRONE

Twenty two Review

Cloudlands represents an animistic celebration of cold, snow, fog, mist, and icy air. Across seven lengthy tracks Aqua Dorsa deploy guitars, synthesisers, piano, percussive elements, and a range of more exotic instruments such as Theremin, singing bowls, and a waterphone (a very unique kind of tuned percussion instrument which has water reservoirs inside it to shape the timbre of the tones it produces).
The flesh of each track is composed from drifting drones, mostly sounding like they’ve been generated by processed guitars or keyboards. These trailing layers of sound gently float across one another, weaving minimalist but evocative textures. The general effect is to conjure images of Artic or Antarctic horizons, ice-clad seas, or icy mountains high above the tree line.
Woven through the drones are some very beautiful percussion elements, mostly sounding programmed, though the credits suggest that some live playing is present as well. At times these elements are more explicitly drum kit-like in character (though always processed through various sonic filters); at other times they are more abstract, rhythmically patterned clicks, beeps, and samples.
The percussive elements bring in something of a laid back trip hop influence and set off a good contrast with the ambient/drone facets of the music. Aqua Dorsa are really good at laying down a strong groove without abandoning delicacy or subtlty, and they know when to introduce beats and when to let them subside again.
This tasteful application of beats and percussion to ambient drones creates an excellent dynamic trajectory to the album as a whole. At times the energy builds into a stronger force, then subsides back into dreamer, mist-soaked territory. It keeps the music as a whole quite engaging, which is a rare achievement for what is essentially ambient music.
The chimes, samples (in particular of distant, blowing wind), crackle, and so forth, provide the third pillar on which the release as a whole is built. They are used to underscore the spaciousness of the drones, to render unto the percussion a more organic feel, and to break up the repetitive aspects of the music and keep things feeling fresh.
All in all it is the atmosphere of this album that most impresses, however. Somehow despite the icy aesthetic of the music it never feels forbidding, isolating, or emotionally cold. Indeed, there is a real sense of comfort, of being at home.
Perhaps the feeling evoked is similar to what it is like in the final stages of hypothermia – one is overcome with warmth and well-being even as one’s pulse stills and one’s breath rattles into stillness. Somehow I find such an image to be a font of optimism!
There’s something life-affirming about this excursion into forbidding climates and horizons and on the whole this is a beautiful album.